Who's buzzworthy at the University of Rochester?

April 15, 2013 was a big day for the University of Rochester as students from the Campus Times took home two Society of Professional Journalists’ Mark of Excellence awards for the Northeast Region. The awards ceremony was part of a two-day conference that took place at Rutgers University in New Jersey. The entire 2012 Campus Times Staff (pictured right) won 3rd place for Best All-Around Non Daily Student Newspaper (at a medium-sized university) and former Editor-in-Chief Jason Silverstein ‘13 won 2nd place in Feature Writing for his article “Domestic Propaganda” that appeared in the Buffalo News in August 2012.

The awards are especially exciting as the University of Rochester’s region is extremely competitive and includes top-tier journalism schools such as Syracuse, Columbia, New York University, and Penn State. In the medium-sized university category, Rochester competes with Harvard University, Quinnipiac University, Hofstra University, and Villanova University. While most of these schools have journalism majors and extremely competitive student papers, the University of Rochester does not have an official journalism major, making the success of the Campus Times and Silverstein all the more impressive.

The Campus Times staff is a diverse group of students, with a relatively equal mix of students who view journalism as a hobby and those who view it as a potential career. Not having a journalism major at the University changes the feel of the newspaper, welcoming students from all majors to contribute. 2012 Publisher Justin Fleming ‘13, for example, is a brain and cognitive sciences major. “Everyone loves journalism as a hobby, and are extremely dedicated to the paper,” says Fleming. The mix of interests and perspectives has helped shape the Campus Times into a unique institution, and the staff are extremely excited about being recognized for the work they put into the paper.

This year marks the first award for the Campus Times print edition since the 1990s (The Campus Times did win an award for their website in 2011), and it comes on the heels of a complete re-design effort undertaken in the spring of 2012. Former editor-in-chief and current Publisher Melissa Goldin described the previous layout as a “mish-mosh” of different formats, with different sections being given different formats as they changed locations and were added to the paper. The 2012 staff worked extensively to build a new format from the ground up, with the goal of creating a cleaner and more consistent design. The staff started with a number of different templates and collaborated to decide which ones to proceed with. “We didn’t move forward with a new design until the entire staff was behind the idea,” says Fleming. The staff then held focus groups over the summer to obtain feedback and refine the new format. The first issue with the new format launched in the fall of 2012 (take a look at the new format here). The paper also made a number of business changes in recent years, hiring a new ad agency and changing printing companies to save costs on the increased color printing required for the new format. The staff also benefited from an alumni feedback group for the paper that had been established a few years earlier, which allows former Campus Times members to offer comments on the paper via email.

Jason Silverstein ‘13, an English and Anthropology double major, started writing for the Campus Times after becoming interested in professional criticism freelance writing for the Buffalo News in high school. Silverstein started writing music reviews for the Campus Times, but eventually moved to an editing position. Silverstein became editor-in-chief in 2011, a position he described as “almost a full time job, I would work 35 to 40 hours a week on top of classes.” Silverstein went on to hold a reporting internship at the Buffalo News in summer 2012. Starting with music and film criticism, Silverstein had the opportunity to attend press screenings around Buffalo.

As the internship progressed, his role expanded to feature writing. While working on an assignment to cover cemetary tours being offered at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, Silverstein discovered that the president of Forest Lawn, Joseph P. Dispenza, had previously been a musical comedy star in New York City. Curious about what might cause such a drastic career change, Silverstein pitched the story to his editor and returned to Forest Lawn to write a full profile on Dispenza. The article, Forest Lawn’s president relies on his theater background, is an extremely interesting look at Dispenza’s acting history, and how it is more related to the cemetery business than one might think. Silverstein’s award-winning piece “Domestic Propaganda” profiled Despina Stratigakos, an architecture professor at the University of Buffalo who will be traveling to Germany for two years to write a book titled Hitler at Home. Silverstein’s piece was written over a two week period, and he conducted multiple interviews with Stratigakos. The article discusses Stratigakos’ research and goals and the book’s analysis of Hitler’s domestic life and how images of his home life that appeared in household magazines affected society’s perceptions of him. Silverstein submitted the article to the Society of Professional Journalists in January, and was “absolutely amazed” when it won 2nd place in the contest, ahead of a student from Harvard University. “Being editor-in-chief of the Campus Times was enormously beneficial,” SIlverstein says. “It gave me a chance to gain a lot of independent work experience and the chance to work under pressure without fear of severe consequences. It was absolutely important in preparing me for working in the field of journalism outside of the University.” Silverstein plans to return to the Buffalo News in the summer to undertake a paid reporting internship, before heading to Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism this fall.

The Campus Times is always interested in new contributors, and welcomes all interested students to contact the group through email: editor@campustimes.org.